Building fences

Summary: UEFI Restricted Boot continues to be blamed for impeding the growth of free operating systems amid widespread Vista 8 dissatisfaction

The truth of the matter is that "Windows 8 is making only marginal progress and Windows RT continues to flop," says the Associate Editor of InformationWeek.com, which is a Microsoft-friendly Web site. Even Windows boosters hardly ever denied that Vista 8 is a flop. They just blame others, e.g. OEMs, the users, etc. Mr. Pogson points out that Microsoft is creating a new breed of lock-in and OEMs are still part of it. With UEFI Restricted Boot, which distros are still just trying to catch up with, Microsoft has even upset some rather Microsoft-friendly entities, as Ravi reminds us. The Linux Foundation says that "this has raised concerns that Microsoft Secure Boot will make it difficult to install Linux or other operating systems on a Windows 8 computer."

The very notion of a "Windows 8 computer" is rather sickening. Microsoft wants to impede general-purpose computer architecture. A Linux and BSD proponents site says that Vista 8 is the "most important reason to switch to [GNU]\Linux" and UEFI has a lot to do with it. The site's author starts by stating:

As somebody who fully embraces the Free Software principle, I have no need for Windows 8 in my environment. Never used any version of Windows, and never will.

Previous versions of Windows were bad enough, but Windows 8, with its Restricted Boot requirements, have made dual-booting a Linux distribution with Windows 8 on store-bought computers a royal pain in the rear end.

Developers mostly reject Vista 8 and even Linux critics (masquerading as "advocates"), lean on the FSF for support. To quote:

The Free Software Foundation has taken recently to running a rather aggressive campaign. Go to the website and judge for yourself. I hope the information helps you to make an informed decision that includes switching away from Windows to Linux.

"A hedge fund whose purpose is to influence boards sees potential in Microsoft and wants it to bring Office to more platforms," according to a new report on which our contributor remarks as follows: "The office format monopoly is what ties people to Windows and helps keep the Windows monopoly. Here is pressure to break that."

Windows on portable devices is a failure as Windows RT never took off and one pundit wrote:

The Web usage numbers are in: Windows RT can't get traction, and Lenovo doesn't believe RT 'is what businesses want'

From the same site we pull this other criticism:

iOS and Android work well enough on a smaller screen, but Windows 8 will not

This is an area where Microsoft has been trying to make embedded chips Linux-hostile, especially with companies like ARM involved. This never worked because Microsoft lacked inertia in the area, but what about the desktop? A formal antitrust complaint has been lodged. ⬆